KEY BENEFITS
Even though the corruption is hard to be expressed in numbers, the comparable indicator of the success of our project is certainly the saving of the public finances, which the town disposes of. In the first six months of the project’s anticorruption measures in place, we saved 28% of anticipated costs. How did we get to this number? Before the implementation of the project into everyday life, procurement was done in accordance with the appropriate laws. Our project voluntarily initiated standards, which go way above the mandatory legislature. One of the measures is an introduction of electronic auctions into the process of procurement. To make the procurement fully transparent, all information regarding the tenders is available 24/7 on an internet domain www.transparentnemesto.sk. Details about all tenders including a possibility of registration for potential business partners are all available on the domain of our own electronic auction house martin.ebit.sk. After the launch of electronic auctions, the financial sums that won the auctions have gone rapidly down. The saved costs for the first six months represent 28%. So if we realize that the methodology for calculating the anticipated costs has not changes and the only change was the launch of electronic auctions, we can clearly state that reached cost savings of public resources are a direct result of one of the measures of our anticorruption project – the electronic auctions. Same principle is applied to the sale of town properties or a selection of renters of real estate governed by the town. The result is not only a fully transparent process that minimizes room for corruption; it also maximizes financial efficiency of public resources.
Another number we can compare is the attendance of the website
www.transparentnemesto.sk that shows the quantitative increase in interest and
participation of the public in public services. The new domain, which the
project launched as one of the most effective tools for eliminating room for
corruption, provides constant access to all information in the fields mostly
susceptible to corrupted behavior. It lists all contracts, invoices, tenders,
filling of vacant job positions, purchase of all services and goods, budget,
allocation of town apartments to those in need, ethical standards for the town
representatives and employees, town’s grant programs, zoning plan or documents
approved by the Town Council. The attendance of the website has grown every
month since its launch in July of this year. The town of Martin has almost 60
thousand inhabitants and the website had 8 thousand visitors in November. In
December, the attendance grew to 11.5 thousand visitors, which represents more
than 40% increase, respectively.
We now get to the qualitative benefits. It is a general trend that the public’s
interest in what is going on in public services is decreasing. It is reflected
in dropped numbers of voters during elections to municipalities and government.
The common argument of the public is a lack of trust in decision making of
elected officials, which is done in a nontransparent manner, many a time behind
closed doors and with unclear rules. On one hand, the transparent town website’s
main goal is to secure a full transparency in the simplest possible manner and
to narrow down the space for corruption when the town representatives or
employees of public institutions make decisions. On the other hand, it provides
the public with tools for monitoring and possible analysis of decision processes.
The public may thus evaluate, react and comment on the course of events in
public services. The added value to all this should be the regaining of the
public’s trust in the performance of public officials, which shall directly
reflect in the public’s participation in the public issues around them.